Creating a review cycle

How to set up and schedule an employee review cycle.

Implementing a new review cycle consists of 3 main steps:

1. Select a template and add it to your review cycle
2. Setting up the review cycle, adding dates and general settings
3. Launch and follow progress

1. Select a template

Note: Managers are not able to create their own templates or select anyone other than their subordinates.

For Admins and Owners, you'll find some ready to use templates for the most common types of reviews. These are created with the help of experienced HR professionals and contain a best-in-class setup for some of the most common cases.

But in case they are not, you can either copy and edit or create your own template.

In this guide we'll use one of the existing templates to get started!

2. Setting up the review cycle

A Review cycle allows you to decide on the scope and schedule of a review.

Decide on who should receive feedback (reviewees)

Decide on who should give feedback (reviewers)

The most common set up is to set up a review cycle that allows employees to share self feedback as well as get feedback from their direct manager. However, you can also include other peers for a more holistic feedback loop, a 360 review. Some more information about the possible combinations of reviewer set you can find in this article.

Define the schedule

Review Cycle Period

Outline for how long a review cycle should be active and accessible.

1. Start date: From this point onwards the Review Cycle will be active and participants will be able to access and contribute with feedback.
2. End date: The Review Cycle will be closed and locked and participants will not be able to submit any more feedback or notes. 

Cadence:

• One time event: The review cycle only be active once and run for the defined Review Cycle Period
• Recurring event: The first review cycle will be active according to the defined review cycle period (in the example from March 20th to March 27th). You can then decide in what cadence the review should be repeated - automatically retrigger the review cycle on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly etc. basis

Example according to above set up:

• First Review will be active from March 20th until March 27th (participants have 1 week to complete the review process)
• You decide that the process should be repeated on a weekly cadence:
  • Next review will be active for participants from March 28th and they will have one week to complete the process (April 4th)

We recommend to set a review cycle period to be equal to or shorter than the cadence.

Access:

• Owners have by default access to all review cycles even if they have not triggered the review cycle. They can see all results but can also make changes to ensure continuous access to the results.
• Even after activation of a review cycle the access can be edited - more info can be found in this article.

Define notifications and reminders

• Launch email: When creating a new review cycle it is important to share some background on the purpose of a review as well as expectations. You can write your text which then will be sent to participants by email.
• Default notifications: In addition to Email we also have standard notifications via Slack or Microsoft teams to make sure that everybody knows when they are expected to take part in a review.
• Custom reminders: Additional reminders can be defined to make sure that participants stick to the timeline and hand in all necessary steps before the review cycles closes and gets locked
  • Feedback: x number of days after start date
    • to make sure people don't wait until the very end to submit their answers, allowing for some reflection and possibly have a few days for a discussion/meeting afterwards
  • Meeting notes: x number of days before end date
    • you might have a meeting as a part of your set up, in that case it will be good to make sure the session is booked and notes logged

3. Review and Launch

You have the possibility to check if everything is set up correctly before launching the review cycle.

The timeline adjusts to the notification settings and shows you wither standard notifications or custom notifications for feedback and meeting notes, based on your chosen settings.

You've launched the Review cycle! ?

To read more about Employee Reviews

Go here